![]() Meanwhile, desperate to protect her from harm-and prevent her from getting stuck in that alternative dimension-Pendergast has the one-use-only time machine retooled. Posing as an Eastern European aristocrat, she insinuates herself into New York society to get next to the falsely celebrated Leng-who has taken the elixir himself-with the aim of killing him. After belatedly discovering that the essential ingredient of the elixir was taken from the spines of young women, including her older sister, she uses the time machine that appeared in Bloodless (2021) to return to old stomping grounds-where, bizarrely, she encounters her own 9-year-old self. More than a century later, now under Pendergast's wing, she is only 20 in physical terms. Taken off the meanest streets of New York by Leng when she was 9, Constance was given an experimental elixir by him that succeeded in dramatically slowing down her aging process. Enoch Leng and prevent him from killing her two siblings. Well-drawn characters introduce the criminal underworld to the occult kind in a breathless and compelling plot.Ĭonstance Greene, ageless protégé of FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, travels back to 1880s New York-the time and place of her childhood-to save the world from the evil Dr. Like the first book, this one ends with a cliffhanger. The plot is relentless and clever, and the writing is vivid, intelligent, and funny at just the right moments, but best of all are the complex characters, such as the four murderers, each with a backstory that makes it possible for the reader to trust them to enter hell and have the strength to leave again. He appears to be in hell, but is he stuck there for good? Alex and Pamela Dawes-Lethe’s Oculus, or archivist/administrator-have found a reference to a pathway called a Gauntlet that can open a portal to hell, but can they find the Gauntlet itself? And what about the four murderers the Gauntlet ritual requires? Meanwhile, Alex’s past as a small-time drug dealer is catching up with her, adding gritty street crime to the demonic white-collar evil the Yale crowd tends to prefer. She had to take over in a hurry after the previous Virgil, Darlington, her mentor and love interest, disappeared in a cliffhanger at the end of the first book. In the world of Bardugo’s Alex Stern series, Yale’s secret societies command not just powerful social networks, but actual magic it’s Lethe’s job to keep that magic in control. And not just any member-she’s Virgil, the officer who conducts the society's rituals. ![]() Galaxy “Alex” Stern is a member of Lethe House, the ninth of Yale’s secret societies. Throughout, MacKenzie’s concise prose style generates sharp images for example, in “Telephone,” which takes place in a pre-smartphone setting, Anna and her friends brace themselves for the scary activity to begin: “Ten flip phones creaked open, and ten thumbs hovered over the green call button, waiting.”Ī Yale sophomore fights for her life as she balances academics with supernatural extracurriculars in this smart fantasy thriller, the second in a series. In it, a Minneapolis house- and dogsitter plays a game with a creepy, spirit-possessed doll, with predictably unnerving results. However, the book’s chilling standout is “The Hide-and-Seek Game,” which draws on a Japanese urban legend. The author unusually grounds the final tale in realism, asserting that it’s a true account of her teenage years, involving a menacing ghost and a Ouija board. Likewise, when characters summon ghosts or demons, the creatures often evoke the summoner’s internal despair, such as a Harvard University grad student’s dark secret in “The Telephone Game.” Some tales include characters that are already well acquainted with the supernatural, such as a girl who lives in a haunted house and a former Wiccan who once had powerful psychic abilities. MacKenzie also ties her stories together with profound themes many of the women characters, for example, suffer from loneliness even when surrounded by friends or family members. All supply readers with the requisite rules, and recurring imagery, such as candles and mirrors, appears in many tales. Each of these eight works feature people playing similar games, such as the popular Bloody Mary myth, which involves repeating the titular woman’s name in a mirror. But, as with most of the characters in these tales, Alice isn’t prepared when the activity takes a sinister turn. In the opening “The Elevator Game,” high schooler Alice tests a Korean urban legend that asserts that pressing a particular sequence of elevator buttons will take a passenger to another dimension. Playing games to conjure spirits and demons leads to horrifying consequences in MacKenzie’s debut short story collection.
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